


Between the Lines

by DivineVarod



Category: Red Dwarf
Genre: Closeted Character, Inner Dialogue, M/M, Series 2, Stasis Leak, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-20
Updated: 2016-08-20
Packaged: 2018-08-09 18:24:02
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 963
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7812373
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DivineVarod/pseuds/DivineVarod
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What Rimmer really wanted to tell Lister during their nightly conversation in Stasis Leak.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Between the Lines

_“You're going to stay with her? For the sake of three weeks together you're going to give up your life?”_  
  
I'm now certain holograms have hearts, because I think my hologramic heart just broke. Over the course of our last three years together I thought we had grown close. After the troubled first months we accepted our fates and begun to spent all our time together. Lately you have been so nice to me (diary reading aside.) Lister you helped me learn to accept that life is worthwhile as a hologram. While I kept you busy and occupied to stop you from becoming too depressed about being the last human alive. We have talked, shared secrets and yes: I thought, I really thought we had grown close.

Call me pathetic, but I had never been happier: not even when I was alive. I thought I finally had a friend. Someone who had grown to like me for who I am. We had build something together. We have been through something special together. We belong together and now you want to leave me? Leave me just to be with her? The woman who dumped you? Broke your heart?

 _“Yeah.”_  
  
Suddenly I find myself out of bed, frantic, pacing the floor. This hurts so much! It hurts even more because I can't tell you the truth. Can't tell you what I really feel. So I just ramble and blurt out half truths.

 _“I don't believe it Lister! Selfish or what?”_  
  
Shut up, why can't I shut up?

_“Why?”_

_“What about me? I've given you the best years of my death!”_  
  
I am getting too upset, too angry. I have to be careful, else I might betray more than I want you to know!  
  
_“Is that it, then? Three years, thanks a lot, pal, I'm off. No sort of regrets? Not so much as a lump in your throat? No, you're thinking of Kochanski. The only lump you've got is up the front of your trousers.”_  
  
If only you knew how much I want to be her, be Kochanski and have you think of me in that way, make me cause that look in your eyes. I wasn't lying that first week, during your exams: having to live in her body wold be a small price to pay if it meant you actually wanted me around: If it meant you could actually ... like me. I couldn't bear the thought of you being the one who switched me off. You hating me that much. Someone else with you using my light bee. Even if you did dislike me I preferred staying and being hated over …

 _“I'm going for it, Rimmer. If there's one thing I've learned, it's that you don't get many shots at happiness. So when you do, go for them all.”_  
  
So you really are leaving me? What if I would give the two of you the stasis booth? No, no I can't as that would mean having to watch the two of you together for the rest of my existence. Every day for the next seventy years I'd have to watch you and her kissing, holding hands, probably doing a lot more … While I … I can't even touch you. So yes, go after her and die if that's what you really want.  
  
_“I'm sharing a bunk with a character out of a Barbara Cartland novel.”_  
  
I joke, joke to keep up the pretence, to keep the pain away.

 _“What would you do in my place?”_  
  
I'd die again for you Lister, if I knew I had the chance of one hour in your arms. But I can't tell you that. You'd mock me, or switch me off because you'd think I'd become unstable.

_“I don't know, I... oh, do what you like.”_

_“Where are you coming from, Rimmer? You don't even like me.”_  
  
Another knife in my heart. What's the use of being a hologram if you can still feel this kind of pain?  
Don't like you? Are you just saying that to make me agree? You know that we build some sort of connection over time.

_“Don't I?”_

_“No.”_  
  
You don't know me at all Lister …

 _“Fine.”_  
  
I give in, I'm so tired now. What's the use of this conversation if I can't even tell you how I really feel?

 _“You don't though, do you? You don't even like me.”_  
  
Why can't you shut up? I can't tell you the truth. Why are you doing this? What do you want to hear?

_“That's what you think, is it?”_

_“Yeah.”_  
  
Wait ... Maybe this is the moment? The time to tell the truth? Maybe you have guessed and want to hear me say how I truly feel? You must be asking all this for a reason?

_“I will tell you something that will probably stun you rigid.”_

_“What?”_  
  
A smirk? No, no, you're mocking me, I can hear it in your voice, see it in your eyes. I can't tell you. I'll just have to bear this pain alone for all eternity.

 _“You're right. I don't like you. I don't like what you stand for. But, for some weird reason...”_  
  
I can't stop thinking about you, have had feelings for you from the first day we met. You ruined my life with who you are. Your eyes, your lips, even your stupid braids. The way your personality lights the room, the way you care about others. You are everything I wish I could be. I love you Dave Lister and you will never know. And you are leaving me and I cannot let this happen because even having you with me while you hate me is better than not having you at all.  
  
_“I don't know. What's the point? Everything always goes wrong for me.”_


End file.
